S-XPS 1645 Throttling Info. and Updates

Hi everyone,
I have read through as much of this thread as I could and other threads. I have an SXPS 1645, i7-720QM, ATI 5730 etc. It came with a 130W adapter. The fan spins loudly with minimal stress and it also throttles, HW monitor has shown the temperature going up to 87 degrees celsius on one of the cores. I almost always use it with an external monitor. My warranty runs out in a month. Is it worth complaining to Dell about this, is there anything they can do? Or knowing that the warranty is running out, should I take the plunge, open the laptop and clear out dust and replace thermal paste and try to fix it myself? Am I likely to get any helpful response from Dell?

 

I am about to throw mine out the window, throttling, not throttling, the fan runs almost constantly. it can just be sitting there turned on and the fan runs like it gaming worlds of war or something. I give up and now I am having serious doubts about buying another dell given all the problems I have had with this one! I have Throttlestop installed and my temps hover around 66 to 80 degrees "c"... This without doing anything. I am already out of warranty and they had to replace the motherboard twice for keyboard failures and once for when the monitor just stopped working. They did send me a 130 watt adapter and i usually only watch movies, listen to music and on the occasion play card games, nothing that should remotely push the envelope of this thing. I guess I will quit wining and hope that someone else here has found a solutiuon to the XPS 1645 or should I just move on and try and find a replacement and if so which one?

thanks for listening

BigShow

 

BigShow & bycros, e-mail both [email protected] AND [email protected] with a formal explanation of your frustrations and someone from the Exec. Cust Service team will contact you. I've attached my exact statement below so you can use as a point of reference. The SXPS1645 is a pretty crappy setup, no doubt. I had the same symptoms...a fan that never stops running even during the most mundane tasks, throttling and overheating. Dell has a new XPS 15 in production for me as we speak.

 

Question to anyone who has gotten a replacement: Is dell supposed to configure a new machine based on the cost you originally paid, or are they only obligated to send a replacement with similar specs, what's the rule? Reason I ask...I paid over $1600 for my SXPS a year ago, and my replacement XPS15 is under $1300 value.

 

It would make sense to match (or beat) specs and not price. What if someone got a crazy good deal on their laptop, and replacing it based on price they would now get a much worse laptop?

 

When they replaced my 1555 they replaced with the 1645 I now have. The salepeople told me it was based on the $ value at time of the trade in and it would not be less in capacity, ie bigger and or better than the one I traded in. I kinda wish now that I had just kept the 1555 instead of this one.

BTW, the fan has now been on continously for the last 4 days, I figure it will probably burn out pretty soon and I have no wish to continue business with dell until I can be reassured they have done some quality control...

cheers

BigShow

 

Latest update on my 1645. After writing Michael @ dell.com I had one of the executive customer relations people call me up and check that I had all the latest drivers. Once that was confirmed and the problem still exsisted they offered to repair the "fan/problem" I not sure what the real problem is other than i's running hot all the time, but they sent me a return box and said they would be repairing what ever it is that they find. I am in the middle of buying a replacement/more mobile laptop and after speaking with them I decided to go ahead and purchase the Alienware 11xR3. If a company is willing to stand by their product even after the warranty has expired, I am willing to continue business with them... Thanks to all concerned here for the information and support!

 

It's too hot because the fan output is blocked by the LCD when it is up.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

It's hot either way. Mine is connected to an external monitor, it runs all the time with the laptop screen closed and turned off. HW Monitor shows a peak recorded temperature of 93 degrees celsius and it was throttling yesterday when I was copying and then opening RAW files off an SD card to my hard disk.

 

Place your XPS on a stand so it can suck air from underneath (ye I know, but it works). And remove the dustfilter. Saves you 5-10c

 

Hi there.
Can someone please tell me if the XPS 1645 is compatible with this 150W AC Adapter for Dell Alienware M15x?

The only info I have from the advertisement is
Manufacturer Part Number: N426P
Dell Part Number: 330-5829

Here's the link
DELL Adaptador CA de 3 pinos de 150 watts com cabo de alimentação de 3,28 pés para notebook Dell Alienware M15x : Acessórios para Notebooks | Dell Brasil

It's said to be compatible with:
Alienware M15x
Alienware M17x
XPS 14 (L401X)
XPS 15 (L501X)

Thanks in advance!

 

I THINK having extra watt is ok because your laptop will only ask for so much it needs. Just like desktop PSU. I THINK.

Anyways, you could get that brick and just use the connector from your original power brick since generic dell power has the same type connector from the power bruck to the actual laptop. If u know what i mean... (the whole power supply is in parts. One for power brick itself and one cable to connect the power brick to yo laptop)

so that should be able to work. but having 150w wont make your laptop use all that juice unless the bios and stuff allows to draw that extra power... im not sure if this issue has been solved to draw EXTRA from 130w people have been getting so just letting you know. maybe it is allowed idk

 

Thanks for the reply Dellienware.

My XPS 1645 was delivered with a 90W adapter and I never got a 130W one from Dell, since I live in BR (bought the damn thing in the US and never managed to get one sent for free).

Anyway, my original adapter died and the brazilian online dell store offers this 90W XPS compatible adapter ( DELL Adaptador CA de 3 pinos de 90 watts com cabo de alimentação de 3 pés para os notebooks Dell Inspiron/Latitude/Studio/XPS/workstation móvel Precision : Acessórios para Notebooks | Dell Brasil.

Beyond 90W, there's only one option: that 150W adapter ( DELL Adaptador CA de 3 pinos de 150 watts com cabo de alimentação de 3,28 pés para notebook Dell Alienware M15x : Acessórios para Notebooks | Dell Brasil.

I do believe having more than 130W is not a problem. I also know that it won't get more power then bios orders it to. What I wonder is if it will work at all with my XPS1645.

I'm not sure I understood what u said about using the connector from my original power brick, cuz I don't think it can be unplugged.

The whole power supply is, indeed, composed of two parts:
one is made of the power brick itself + the cable that connects it to the laptop (can't be unplugged);
and the other part, that can be unplugged, is the cable that connects the power brick to the wall socket.
(check the image)

Will the 150W adapter's connector work with my XPS1645? (will it plug in?)
Can anyone tell me if I'll have any compatibility issues?

 

1) The 150w could be directly compatible.. I had all 90, 130, 150w psus and owned the M15x myself. I remember the shape of the power connector to the laptop being all the same for sxps16, precision m4500, and M15x. However, the circular metal connector to the laptop could have a different diameter for different model.. But realize this: 90w and 130w have the same compatibility, so why would 20w more make a difference? but again this isnt guarantee

2) I saw the picture. Look at the cable on the left. There are two ends. The metalic end goes to the wall and the black plastic end goes to the power brick which is in the right. So what I meant was that physically, there are two different components to the entire power supply. So what i was telling you was that: order the 150w power and use your current cable (left in the picture) to connect to the new power brick. Because I am 99% sure that the black plastic end of the cable is basically dell standard so it should fit 150w power one (although it was from 90w one).

just for reference, if the dell is sending you the latest stock and if that psu is the CAPABLE, standard psu for M15x, I can assure you that the actual product will look much different from the one in the picture at dell website. The psu for M15x looks exactly same as the 90w and 130w ones. its just that it is much thicker. but then the whole structure of having the cable and brick would be the same.


cant you just order and return it if for some reason it doesnt work?

also before you use it, make sure your bios or whatever will fully utilitize the 130w. u dont want it using max 90w with that 150w.

hope it helps

 

Thanks again.

I think I understood now. But if the new adapter comes with a cable of it's own than there's no point on using the old one, right?

I believe I have 7 days to return any product bought from internet (legally speaking, I don't know what is dell's policy).

 

Part may fit but it all depends if the bios accepts it. If the bios doesn't support 150w it will only draw 130w from it so you really don't see an benefit

 

If the new cable will directly fit well in your laptop power connector, which is more likely the case, then yea you can use that.

if the 150w is the only option after 90w, then i guess you dont have the choice in the first place. but i guess if u get a new laptop or something maybe u can use it later too.

At this moment, if I were you, I would personally get that 150w because I believe that there are much much greater chance of it being compatible.

 

I'm guessing that the 150w adapter would be compatible with the system (drawing 130w). In the BIOS updates notes (A09), they added support for the 230w business beast laptop adapter "to treat as 130w adapter" so there's a good chance the closer-to-130w 150w adapter should be good to go.

 

yes and for some reason it doesnt work, i m sure dell has return policy to let you return

good luck

 

I bought my studio xps 1645 at the beginning of last year (January) and it's been fine until recently, when I noticed throttling issues. I contacted Dell, and they swapped my 90w adapter for the 130w, and I updated my BIOS. Hoping that was the end of it, I opened my newly purchased BF3 to find that I still had the same issues, and that at anything other than low res/quality, it was unplayable and even then, it would become unresponsive after 5 minutes or so.

I tried ThrottleStop, and saw that my processor was still being throttling by clock modulation. Using the program, I could stop the throttling, and the game ran fine (at lower res at least, didn't try higher). However, after a couple of minutes of having ThrottleStop enabled, my computer simply turns off – no BSOD. Both my screen and the external monitor turn black and the computer shuts down a few seconds later.

tl;dr throttlestop fixes the throttling but causes my 1645 to crash when running intensive applications

What I'm wondering, is whether it could be crashing due to overheating, or whether it's something else. Any ideas?

Edit: I had installed MSI Afterburner, to monitor my GPU, and it worked a couple of times. When running the game, my GPU was around 97% consistently, until the throttling started and it dropped rapidly to ~20%, though it returned when I enabled throttlestop. The temperature got as high as 84C; every time I try to open MSI Afterburner now, it instantly freezes my computer, so I can't get any more readings. Could this mean that the GPU is simply overloading?

Edit 2: I've pasted a log from ThrottleStop here. You can see the CMod drops to 12.5% at 21:54:12, and I enable ThrottleStop at 21:57:18 and the CMod raises back to 100%. However, with TS enabled, the temperature of the CPU seems to increase, and the computer crashes when the DTS falls low - can't see how low, as the TS logs didn't update regularly enough.

 

@Jagger08 You're shutting down because while throttlestop stops the overheating each bios of the 1645 has a different shutdown temp if I'm not mistaken. The same would happen to me if I didn't monitor my temps while running it. A09 is the best bios to run (higher temp threshold) IIRC.

 

Fenikkusu, thanks for the advice. I tried installing A09, but because I already have A13 installed, it won't let me downgrade. Is there a way to get around that, or do you have any other suggestions? Cheers.

 

Yep.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/450888-up-downgrading-your-1645-bios.html

 

Thanks, I've downgraded it, and it doesn't shut down as quickly now. The temperature of the GPU still hits the limit though, so I'm going to try a few things to bring it down, like removing the filter on the fan.

 

Wow really? I guess running BF3 that's not that surprising it's pretty intense and the 1645 has awful cooling. I dealt with mine for almost 2 years before trading it in. I used to have a fan blowing behind my XPS to help cool it while I played that + a cooling pad to keep temps out of the shutdown zone. I don't think I ran anything as graphically intensive as BF3 though.

 

@Jagger
My XPS shutdown because of overheating before I reapplied paste and cleaned it. It only shut itself down at GPU 105c.

Please activate GPU in throttlestop settings and paste a log here from BF3

 

hey guys i really NEED help.so it's apr 2012 and this laptop has been out a few years and i just got it second hand. the specs seemed amazing so i just had to get it. found out theres a overheating issue. its so hot that it hurts my hands. i've tried cleaning out the inside with compressed air. ive done a stress test and and it maxes around 90c+ degrees and it had shut down on me once so far and i have yet to even do anythign thing besides facebook and youtube. i like this laptop but have i just lost a 1000 dollars? i need to know what to do?

 

2 simple steps bro......
When you get a second hand notebook you need to do 2 things.
1. Change the thermal compound and use ArticSilver5 or something better for both the CPU and GPU. There is a link on how to do it as well.
Link: http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...ging-thermal-paste-as5-studio-xps-1645-a.html
2. Check the "heat vents" for any blocks. Thats usually the major reason why most of the laptops give out. Had a lot of experience in this sector. As well as the filter should be cleaned.
3. Also check whether he has updated his bios as well (A09 the best bios as o now) .

That's that... Let me know if this solves your issues.

 

i installed a new heat sink and it dropped the heat a bit, alspo i updated the bio to a13.. is there a difference between a09 and a13?

 

i have installed throttle stop and it seems to have not even make a difference to my laptops heating problem at all

 

• 
  Yep check the GPU output vent for dust. You could also remove the intake filters from the bottom of the laptop for more intake.
  I've removed so much dust I could make socks out of it
  
  
• I replaced stock paste with AS5, they did a real sjitty job with the stock paste
  
  
• A09 allows higher temps before throttling the GPU, so for performance this is the best bios. A13 will downclock the GPU at 84c.
  edit: BIOS A13.5 from http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/521990-bios-modding-gpu-oc-fun-profit.html is bios A13 (and more), but with the videobios from A09. (=best )
  
  
• Be aware that if you dont replace the paste and clean the laptop, it will be 'impossible' to play games with the LCD open.
  Even if you did apply AS5 paste, I still recommend connecting a separate screen. The dell engineers failed in designing this XPS; when you open the LCD the screen blocks the output-fan. Also I place my XPS on a stand so it can suck in air from underneath.
  
  
• Throttlestop is for overruling the dell downclocking of the CPU, it will not make your laptop cooler, only warmer (and perform better)

 

Hello everyone

I recently bought an i7 920XM (SLBLW not Q3B8) to replace i7 720QM for better performance. I also reapplied thermal paste with AS5, cleaned fan and heatsink and removed the bottom plate for better cooling. For power supply I use a PA-4E 130W adapter.

Thanks to Throttlestop 4.10, I can tweak on TRL and TPL of this extreme edition CPU and get results below, which is not as good as I expected, since someone posted in this thread an i7 940XM running on 26*133MHz and all 8 threads fully loaded with wPrime.

• 1 thread test with superpi 32M :

Maximum ratio = 30x, any value above this will cause sooner or later BSOD, but no instant shutdown, temp is not high during all tests. When TDP is set to 90W (I didn't try values above this when playing with SuperPi), it can reach somewhere around 3.9GHz, but never 4GHz.

• Burning tests with Prime95 and wPrime v2.09 (8 threads fully loaded) :

Prime95 run under the "maximum heat" mode and wPrime test length is set to 1024M.
Safe TDP = 70W. With this value, Prime95 test can last 20min without temp hitting above 97 degree and no worker will halt ; wPrime can finish 1024M run without any problem. During all tests, turbo ratio remains 18x even I set TRL to 25x.
But with TDP > 70W, wPrime will cause sooner or later BSOD with temp not above 95 ; Prime95 will get workers halted and meantime, temp will soon hit near 100C and then instant shutdown.

• Test with wPrime 32M (8 threads):

TDP is set to 95W (like Clarksfield's desktop equivalent, Lynnfield i7 880).
wPrime can safely pass 32M test as much times as you wish, with turbo ratio = 25x. With TRL > 25x, test cause instant BSOD.


So to resume this, TRL limit for i7 920XM on XPS 1645 is 30x for 1 thread test and 25x for 8 thread test; TDP limit for burning test is 70W, during which turbo ratio remains 18x. Compared to that post showing 26x with 8 threads fully loaded, I admit that I am a little bit disappointed.

Actually I did a little search before I got this CPU, but found no one posts their OC results of i7 920XM / 940XM on XPS 1645 (they use mostly Alienware or Clevo machines). So I wish this post could let other users of XPS 1645 and unlocked CPU compare with their results, and see if ever there is another way to improve cooling / power supply for better results, like more powerful 150W or 210W AC adapter, better thermal paste, etc. or simply I unfortunately got a lemon copy of i7 920XM.

Thanks in advance

 

Voilà the post I mentionned above, 5150Joker uses Alienware M17x and i7 940XM, maybe that explains everything (TRL limit = 26x compared to 25x of i7 920XM, better cooling and power supply with M17x compared to XPS 1645).

But still I wish other users could share their experiences with these extreme edition CPU on XPS 1645, I'm sure that I'm not the only one doing this.

 

okay so i went ahead and bought a new heat sink for my laptop and i tried taking it apart and oding it myslf but i ended up going in to geek squad at bestbuy and getting them to do it for e and i also bought the paste and got them to do it for me.. i've noticed a change in temps but not enough for my computer to be so hot that it hurts my hands.. i also started using a dual fan cooling paad but tht onlys drops about 2 degrees... im about to download A06 but that wont make my computer cooler right ?..

what else can i do please help... i know theres got to be something since there's still people using this type of laptop.. currently im getting a avg of 60 degrees celcius and thats only using youtube. ideas anyone?

and before you through ideas ill let you know what i have done

list
replaced 90w with 130 w adapter
replaced the heat sink and paste with a new one(done by bestbuy)
downloaded throttlestop.
and currently downloading A09

 

i tried to install bios A09 but it wont let me it says that i have the newest version of bios for my laptop. what should i do

 

Use bios 13.5W from the topic I gave you.

About the heat, there's not much else you can do. If the paste is applied correctly and you have removed all the dust, it should be fine. How hot do the CPU and GPU get? (throttlestop can tell you).

Still if you put it on your lap with LCD up and play a game it will get hot regardless. It's not designed to do this.
If you wanna play games connect external monitor and close the LCD